The Realty Gods hate me!

We received a counter back from the seller's on the townhouse. They will accept the price of $200k, but won't pay our closing costs. We don't have the money to pay for closing costs ($6k+ and any money we would have saved for moving, furniture, etc.) and if they're already balking at that we are fairly confident they wouldn't be able to afford to sell the house at the appraisal price anyway. For being a buyer's market, it sure is hard to buy a house! Just about everyone is upside down on their mortgage it seems.

Our realtor is going to go back verbally and say we can't do it without assistance on the costs, but in the end I don't think it'd work out when the appraisal comes back. What was I thinking - second time's a charm?

Third time's a charm! :) There was another short sale that opened on the same street, so perhaps we'll go look at that one today. Yes, I'm that crazy (and patient) to try another short sale. We're going to see if it's still available and how far into the short sale process they are (aka, is the listing price the approved bank price). We'll keep our eyes out for more listings in the areas we like and go from there.

We're so blessed to be able to live with my parents while we work out this process. It's certainly not how I pictured my situation being when giving birth to my first kid, but with such generosity it's really hard to complain. We'll find something eventually!

4 comments

Sigh...I'm sorry! You're still sounding pretty positive about things, though. SOMETHING will work out, right?? And eventually, when you're all moved in to whatever amazing place you find, you'll sit back and remember these frustrating days. But you'll also be able to say, "Aren't we glad it didn't work out the other times because we LOVE this place!" =)

good Luck Kel, you have a lot of patience! You will find the right place, I just know it. Are you using your tax credit as your down pmt? Just an idea, if you have a down pmt. saved you could use that as your closing costs and use the government money as your down pmt. I'm not sure if there are programs out there that will let you do it. We were lucky enough to have the seller pay all of our closing costs, and the gvmt. is paying our down payment with the tax credit. I really hope you find something soon:) Love you!

Stacy - sadly, we can't use the $8k as a down payment or to cover closing costs. Apparently that used to be an option about 6 months ago, but something to do with taxes/alimony/child support/etc. that people were abusing it and it was taken away.

We did an FHA loan, which is kind of covering a downpayment - basically we have 100% financing. On our short sale the sellers were going to pay our closing costs, but on this sale the sellers are upside down on the mortgage, so they have to pay to get out of the house as it is - that $6000 or so is a lot of money to them. We don't blame them for not wanting to pay the costs.

We're currently trying to negotiate maybe half the costs or we'll just end up paying them ourselves. We have about $2k spare cash right now and we can roll 1.5% of the house cost into our mortgage to help cover $3k more in additional closing costs.